When I peer review, I tend to pick out everything that could either be made more clear or needs improvement on a global level. The suggestions I make for improvement are solely based on being the reader and how one could perceive what they are writing and if it makes sense to me without any background information. On my first peer review, I highlighted places that I thought could use improvement; either making the sentence more clear or explaining something that would be confusing to someone without a background in the articles or even just the topic at hand. I always comment on the thesis no matter what the paper is about, even if there isn’t anything structurally or ideally wrong with it, just to give the writer a sense of confidence in their own paper. Knowing a person who isn’t themselves, understands what the thesis is saying, gives someone confidence to just keep running with their ideas. With the second peer review, I repeated comments about the claim sentences and how the paragraphs should be structured, not just because they need fixing, but because to me repeating comments gets the author to really take a look at it because it is showing up multiple times in their paper as something that readers may catch on to. I always make sure to look to see if the thesis is tied at the end of paragraphs to the ideas being discussed, if it is, or isn’t, I make sure to comment on it. Confirmation is always helpful to writers, even to myself, because it lets us know that we don’t need to focus on it and that we have it covered. Making sure the quotes fit the paragraphs is another thing I look at quite closely. When using quotes, some may just throw them in hoping they fit, or just to have one. I comment on them to either leave a suggestion of a different quote or a way to integrate it so it’s not so abruptly dropped into the paragraph. At the end of each peer review, our professor had us write an endnote to tie all the comments together into a gist, giving the writer a sense of what to expect and how we thought the piece is going so far. I think this is a good thing because it gives us an idea of what we really need to focus on in the rest of the revision and editing process.

Peer Review 1